


leave it

by aMassiveDisappointment (BadOldWest)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, Cassian wishes she'd let go, F/M, Grief, Jyn wishes she killed Krennic, PTSD, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 18:00:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10576557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/aMassiveDisappointment
Summary: “Leave it,” Cassian had pleaded, confident it wasn’t worth it. A man who did harm for a noble cause, out of necessity. Instead of revenge for harm done, like her.Jyn learns there's a price to survival.





	

A tradition of scavengers was revenge, the pettier the better.

Jyn once dropped a nest of pincer insects into a sleeping man’s bedroll because he’d beaten her to the free food line on whatever blur of a planet she was on, even though he’d already gotten a plate when they first started handing it out. He’d gotten the last plate, ignored her protests and walked away as she stared at him with a gritted jaw and growling stomach. She followed him until his guard was down, sleeping in an alley, and pooled her resources. She waited on the roof above him until she heard him stir and then cry out in pain. She had been thirteen.

She remembered Krennic, the orders made to open fire on her mother, and with each small retaliation she felt readier for the final one. If she saw him again.

And then she did.

 _“Leave it,”_ Cassian had pleaded, confident it wasn’t worth it. A man who did harm for a noble cause, out of necessity. Instead of revenge for harm done, like her.

She left it. She left a part of herself on that beach, sure that it was done, and she had finally chosen the noble thing and Cassian held her and it was going to be alright.

To survive that was agony.

Jyn woke with a surge in her chest of a dream gone too painful to continue, a pulse that had her body tense and release with a sizable gasp.

Cassian’s arm slid around her, his lips at the base of her neck.

“It’s alright, you’re safe,” he whispered, because this wasn’t uncommon in Rogue One, especially in their bed. Bodhi’s sleeplessness was an unspoken fact of life, everyone taking shifts of feigned-insomnia to spend time with him as he fought off nightmares. Last week Jyn had to hold Cassian down while he dreamed out a civilian fatality list the length of her arm, kicking and begging her to just end it all. She’d kissed his brow and tried to reassure him of the lives his contributions to the rebellions would save, but at some point guilt is impossible to weigh on either side, lives cannot be quantified, and Cassian still cried sometimes as he dreamed.

Tears slipped from his face for what he’d done, where she still had the same reaction for what she hadn’t done, and that was turn a blaster to Krennic and make him know it was Galen and Lyra Erso, her family, her childhood, her happiness.

For years, she’d thought hopelessly, murkily that that was what she’d lived for. As Saw’s nearly-leashed protegee, an heir to his extreme approaches. When she was trapped in a cell, it was all she could dream of, however unlikely. To be the one to shoot Krennic between the eyes.

Krennic was dead, but she could have been the one to end him, not his hubris, not his superiors, not the rebellion. It could have been between him and her, personal. But Cassian appealed to her humanity, begging her to be noble, just once.

“You made me leave him,” She choked out, as Cassian spooned behind her and stroked up and down her arm, speaking in a low, soothing voice.

“It wouldn’t have brought you any peace.”

Her friends tried to teach her some things could be unconditional. Baze and Chirrut snuck her extra food she liked at random occasions, when she once told the pincer story after getting too drunk. Bodhi supported her with almost blind devotion and trust. K-2 even stopped broadcasting the odds of her negative behavior, pointing out subtle improvements in her rationality.

Cassian proved it every day with his love without expectations or requirements. After they’d first had sex, she burst out of his room as quickly as she could get dressed afterwards and sulked around her bunk with anxieties churning through her skull at the thought of what it meant. She avoided him for days. He was obviously hurt, but he seemed to understand it wasn’t his fault, it was her upbringing, and she didn’t expect him to stay so she merely left first. He sat next to her every meal, at a safe distance. He still looked in her eyes when they had to interact in their responsibilities, and even, gently, as friends. He let her keep her thoughts to herself, never demanding to know them, and was forgiving when she came back, eager to kiss her again when she finally let him.

Jyn was slowly learning it could happen, but was still faulty at expressing it. Faultier at trusting it.

Cassian tightened his arms around her, trying to make her feel safe enough to let go and fall.

“You have to let it go.”

“I can’t leave it, I can’t leave.” It meant to leave an essential part of herself behind. She couldn’t abandon it, her childhood self, left by everyone including her own need to move on.

Cassian needed someone who could treat him better. Someone who could forgive. Someone who would admit she loved him when he needed it. Someone better than her. Jyn was just a broken child with the same impulses and bitterness and thirst for revenge she’d always had.

“You were trying to save me, but you couldn’t,” her voice was shaky, heaving with sobs. Cassian made a noise of disagreement, nuzzling his face in her hair. He called her something in his native language, that she never understood but always sounded both fluid and warm. It sounded loving.

“He’s dead, Jyn.”

“I had to kill him. Why don’t you understand that.”

“We thought those were our last moments. Did you really want your last breath wasted on him? I wanted you with me. I thought we’d never get time together again.”

“And now that you have it, it isn’t nearly what you expected-”

He gripped her so tightly, her body caged in his. She yelped, anxious, writhing to free herself. “Don’t push me away,” his only order, in a midst of pleading requests.

“I can’t be saved.”

“I’m not trying to save you. You don’t need to be. I’m trying to get you to understand that you’re more than that child that got left behind. Just like you taught me I’m more than a hired gun.”

She could tell he felt that way, with her. Which was why guilt made her sick to her stomach when she pulled away. That first time they’d had sex, he made her let him look at her, smoothing her hair out of her face, going slow, kissing her deeply. She needed to show him her pleasure for him to take any of his own. It took hours, her getting frustrated and ashamed, half-expecting a quick fuck like her usual experience, but Cassian was insistent. She had to strip herself away piece by piece, his mouth and fingers taking careful inventory of intimacies she shared with no one. It was how he needed it. She let him because… she tried to find a dismissive way to explain why.

She had gone silent, still, unmoving in his arms. He was naked, sweat matting his hair from the state they were in before they fell asleep. Skin to skin, he made her feel so warm.

It was how she needed it too.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I took that away from you. He’s dead, Jyn. He’s dead and he failed, because of you. He didn’t care about his life. He cared about his mission. And you stopped it.”

He gave her space to breath, rolling away and watching her with patient, judgement-free eyes. She panted and stared at the ceiling, and it felt like she was back on that tower, choosing between Cassian and Krennic.

There was no joy in killing Krennic. There had been no joy in every other retaliation she’d ever made in her short life. Snarky comments, her own pain redistributed quickly onto the next unfortunate soul.

There was joy with her friends, Chirrut pressing a stolen bun into her hands when they’d run out before she even got to breakfast. Baze pretending he didn’t like the rare dessert that came around after she’d wolfed her portion down, sliding his tray towards her. There was joy when Bodhi snuggled into her lap and whispered about the dark things in his mind, so honest and open with all of himself. There was joy with Cassian between her legs, humming with pleasure as his kisses to her neck prompted her laughter.

“It’s so easy to regret, Jyn. It’s the easiest thing there is. Please, leave it.”

She pulled him over her, knitting a hand in the hair at the nape of his neck. She needed to be blanketed in his weight. Her legs wrapped around him, and with a shuddering, aching heart she needed him so badly in that moment. He complied, because he’d give her anything, sliding inside at the first sign she was wet enough to take all of him.

Her head fell back and she cried out. Cassian worked her over, hovering above her. Her hips rolled along with his thrusts, demanding roughness, but he retained his control with a steady, insistent tenderness.

“If you’d died in that moment, with revenge in your heart, there would have been no room for me. I just wanted a chance for there to be.”

She clutched his shoulders, eyes locking with him. She wanted them screwed tight, in her own black world with only his touch, but for him, she let him see her, she looked back. His breath filled her lungs when he leaned down to kiss her, hungrily.

When she came, greedily, messily, like a tide breaking, Cassian kept going, and that tension inside her was wrapped back around his hand for him to control.

She moaned, trying to flinch away from that last piece of lost control. Cassian was having none of it.

“You can give me one more,” he insisted, but in a reassuring way, like only her doubt separated her from the ability to. Maybe it was true. She believed him, feeling so sensitive after her first orgasm, her defenses down from released tension.

“You don’t have to-”

“I _want_ to.”

Unconditional.

She was boneless with pleasure, but Cassian acted as though the first orgasm never hit, which had it ebb into a second with overwhelming speed. This is what he needed from her, this is what she needed from him, it became the same thing when he was inside her.

After she came a second time, shuddering and writhing and completely detached from any other emotion than just _this,_ Cassian buried his face in her neck and chased her down to oblivion, murmuring his thanks against her skin as she held him tightly. Warmth flooded her insides, and she was dimly aware of the feeling of him coming inside her, how nice it felt. She’d been on the regulated rebellion birth control, but still, Cassian was gentlemanly and when she’d first voiced aversion to merely the _symbolic_ act, he made a point to spend on the sheets or warn her before it was too late. She felt him run down her thighs, and they squeezed and squirmed around his waist, the feeling both dirty and cleansing, as sex with him always felt.

“Sorry,” he whispered, but she shook her head, and stroked her hands up and down his back.

“Don’t be,” she admitted, “I liked it.”

He rolled off of her and curved his body towards hers, stroking his thumb over her cheek. She gave him a small, tentative smile, before resting her head on his chest. She was never much of a cuddler. But she did it because this was what he needed. His arms encircled her, grateful. Jyn couldn’t map her thought process for him with words. She had to show it in her own way. But she chose him.

**Author's Note:**

> So...this popped up in my head about two hours ago. And here it is.


End file.
